Non-star Trek books for Star Trek fans

[Christopher]

I've enjoyed Travis Baldree's Legends & Lattes and Bookshops & Bonedust (I can't, off the top of my head, remember whether it was GC or CLB who turned me on to it)

Must've been Greg, since I've never read those.


The Niven/Trek comparisons seem odd to me, since I don't see that much similarity. Niven's future is less idealistic, more cynical. "The Slaver Weapon" is strangely ruthless for a Trek story, particularly a TAS story, since there's no attempt to find a peaceful solution, no moral message, just strategy to outwit the villains and let them get killed. It's the only TAS episode, and one of the few episodes in Filmation Associates' entire body of work, where anyone dies onscreen.

I've said before, "The Slaver Weapon" is strange as adaptations go, because it doesn't adapt the original story to fit the universe it's adapted to (the way the novel Tin Woodman was adapted into TNG: "Tin Man," for instance), but rather adapts the Trek universe and story format to fit a nearly exact retelling of "The Soft Weapon" complete with most of its Known Space worldbuilding. I'm tempted to believe the whole thing was just Uhura and Sulu convincing Spock to join them in a holonovel of "The Soft Weapon" in the holographic rec room.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Must've been Greg, since I've never read those.

I was leaning that way even as I typed it. They're fun books, the kind of fun that comes from an inherently absurd situation that takes itself completely seriously. Although not even remotely to the extent you see in, say, Airplane!)

I'm tempted to believe the whole thing was just Uhura and Sulu convincing Spock to join them in a holonovel of "The Soft Weapon" in the holographic rec room.

 

[Greg Cox]

Hmm. Other than "The Slaver Weapon," that was both an adaptation of a Niven "Known Space" story and a "Known Space"/ST crossover, my only contact with anything Niven wrote was his collaboration with Jerry Pournelle, The Mote in God's Eye. Which didn't exactly thrill me, in part because the aliens were so alien, in part because the FTL drive was so limited for such a distant-future setting, and in part because the book was so damned long, probably the longest continuous narrative I'd read up to that point (I think I was still pre-teen at the time).

I've enjoyed Travis Baldree's Legends & Lattes and Bookshops & Bonedust (I can't, off the top of my head, remember whether it was GC or CLB who turned me on to it), and Robert Asprin's "Myth" series, and Madeleine L'Engle's "Time" books and the sequels thereof. And did I already mention Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, a steampunk tale based on the conceit of the Underground Railroad being a literal railroad running underground? And while I don't (aside from collections of favorite newspaper strips) generally go for comics, I thoroughly enjoyed The Prince and the Dressmaker, (even though the title suggests that it would be a real drag) and I also like the Foglios' Girl Genius series.

FYI: the third book in Baldree’s series is out now.

 

[Miami Vice Admiral]

A book I keep forgetting to mention that I think is right up Star Trek fans alley is Speaker for the Dead, the Enders Game sequel.

It’s all about Ender going to a new planet and trying to understand and interact with an alien race. From what I recall, people think the race is evil but he has to prove otherwise. Also it has a very Star Trek “all life is valuable” philosophy.

Also I think most Star Trek fans would enjoy the ethical component of Enders Game.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

FYI: the third book in Baldree’s series is out now.

And the title? I'm waiting with a worm on my tongue!

 

[Greg Cox]

And the title? I'm waiting with a worm on my tongue!

Brigands and Breadknives

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I guess writing the same story for the third time is one way to avoid finishing a series that he left hanging in 1993. (GRRM fans, google The War Against the Chtorr and you may feel a bit better. I'm glad I didn't start reading either, personally....)

Gerrold said on Facebook a few days ago he's plotted out the final three chapters of the Chtorr saga, and now he just has to write it.

I've never read the Chtorr saga, either, and while I've read A Song of Ice and Fire at this point I'm not sure I care any more. (I have an ending in my head, from where the books leave off, that is completely different than the television series ending, and I'm okay with that.)

My only contact with anything Niven wrote was his collaboration with Jerry Pournelle, The Mote in God's Eye. Which didn't exactly thrill me, in part because the aliens were so alien, in part because the FTL drive was so limited for such a distant-future setting, and in part because the book was so damned long, probably the longest continuous narrative I'd read up to that point (I think I was still pre-teen at the time).

Matt Jefferies designed the model kit, the "Lief Ericson," that served as Niven and Pournelle's inspiration for the MacArthur. It's not at all how I visualized the MacArthur in my head.

Mote was originally longer! Robert Heinlein told them to cut about a quarter of the book. I would love to see a "restored" edition, but it would probably be bloated like the restored Stranger in a Strange Land.

The Alderson Drive and its limitations as an FTL drive is a key part of the worldbuilding of that universe, and I think it might even be a mistake of think of it as an FTL drive at all. You can't go just anywhere with it. It's more like a key to access something like an unstable wormhole network.

I've said before, "The Slaver Weapon" is strange as adaptations go, because it doesn't adapt the original story to fit the universe it's adapted to (the way the novel Tin Woodman was adapted into TNG: "Tin Man," for instance), but rather adapts the Trek universe and story format to fit a nearly exact retelling of "The Soft Weapon" complete with most of its Known Space worldbuilding.

Whereas I'm fine with that. My non-Destiny theory of the Borg origins has for years been that the Borg were a bioweapon developed during the Slaver Wars that would be immune to the telepathic Power of the Slavers.

A book I keep forgetting to mention that I think is right up Star Trek fans alley is Speaker for the Dead, the Enders Game sequel.

It’s all about Ender going to a new planet and trying to understand and interact with an alien race. From what I recall, people think the race is evil but he has to prove otherwise. Also it has a very Star Trek “all life is valuable” philosophy.

Speaker is really good. The climax of the book, in which Ender plants Human, absolutely broke me the first time I read it.

I have mixed-to-indifferent feelings about Xenocide and Children of the Mind, though.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

The Alderson Drive and its limitations as an FTL drive is a key part of the worldbuilding of that universe, and I think it might even be a mistake of think of it as an FTL drive at all. You can't go just anywhere with it. It's more like a key to access something like an unstable wormhole network.

Indeed, I wonder if it might have been an influence on other FTL drive concepts, like jump drive/gates in the B5 milieu. (In fact, the very first word that popped into my head, when I was first introduced to jump gates, picking up B5 somewhere in the second season, was "Alderson." And that was decades after I'd read Mote.)

 

[Christopher]

Whereas I'm fine with that.

I wasn't making a value judgment, merely noting that the way "The Soft Weapon" was adapted into "The Slaver Weapon" is different from how such adaptations are usually done. In an anthology show, sure, you'd expect a short story adaptation to be true to the original, but if it's being adapted to an existing series, you'd expect the story to be changed to fit the series's format and continuity, instead of vice-versa.

I do think it would have been a better Star Trek ending, and a better Filmation ending, if Spock, Sulu, and Uhura had warned the Kzinti about the impending self-destruct, saved them, and thereby won a measure of trust to build on in the future. I'm surprised Roddenberry, Fontana, Scheimer, et al. apparently didn't recommend such a change.

My non-Destiny theory of the Borg origins has for years been that the Borg were a bioweapon developed during the Slaver Wars that would be immune to the telepathic Power of the Slavers.

But that would make them about a billion years old, which is orders of magnitude too high; they would've surely assimilated the whole galaxy long ago, or been wiped out long ago. IIRC, nothing from the Thrint era of Known Space survived to the present except in stasis boxes.

Indeed, I wonder if it might have been an influence on other FTL drive concepts, like jump drive/gates in the B5 milieu. (In fact, the very first word that popped into my head, when I was first introduced to jump gates, picking up B5 somewhere in the second season, was "Alderson." And that was decades after I'd read Mote.)

Hyperspace jump drives and gates have been around in science fiction far longer than that.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I actually got to interview Larry Niven about 10 years back about his work on the Green Lantern Bible for DC Comics and the one-shot that he plotted for them, Ganthet's Tale. (John Byrne did the script and art for the finished book.) Basically, he figured out ways to have the Green Lantern mythos that was conceived during the Silver Age in the 1960s make more sense from a hard science fiction perspective. He also talked about it in one of his anthologies years ago.

My article ran in Back Issue #80, and it's still available to order from TwoMorrows if you're interested.

 

[Miami Vice Admiral]

Whereas I'm fine with that. My non-Destiny theory of the Borg origins has for years been that the Borg were a bioweapon developed during the Slaver Wars that would be immune to the telepathic Power of the Slavers.

That’s a cool idea!

That reminds me to recommend Maxine Mcarthur’s Time Future. I just remembered it because there’s a bio weapon creature in it.

It’s about a space station commander and definitely reminds me of DS9 and Babylon 5. Probably is closer to B5 than trek though. The plot concerns a human space station under blockade from an alien race that they can’t communicate with, and, in the midst of this, an early space flight from Earth’s past mysteriously winds up at the station. Lots of twists and turns.

Speaker is really good. The climax of the book, in which Ender plants Human, absolutely broke me the first time I read it.

I have mixed-to-indifferent feelings about Xenocide and Children of the Mind, though.

I agree that scene was particularly well done!

Yeah, I’ve never gone beyond Speaker because of the reviews of the rest of the series.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

. The climax of the book, in which Ender plants Human, absolutely broke me the first time I read it.

I'm having trouble parsing the blurred-out clause. Lexically it works. Syntactically, too. Semantically, though . . . .

Hyperspace jump drives and gates have been around in science fiction far longer than that.

I don't doubt it. But Mote was my first encounter with that sort of FTL drive.

Yeah, I’ve never gone beyond Speaker because of the reviews of the rest of the series.

The more I know about the series and its author, the less inclined I am to actually read it.

 

[Christopher]

I don't doubt it. But Mote was my first encounter with that sort of FTL drive.

But you suggested that it might have been an influence on Babylon 5's jump gates. My point is that we can't assume that, because there are many other precedents that might have influenced Straczynski when he created B5.

The more I know about the series and its author, the less inclined I am to actually read it.

The person Orson Scott Card was when he wrote Ender's Game was not the person he is now, evidently. EG is actually a splendid counterargument to the things Card believes now.

Just in general, I don't believe in condemning a work for the sins of its creator any more than condemning a child for the sins of their parent. The work is its own thing, and sometimes it transcends its creator's limitations.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I'm having trouble parsing the blurred-out clause. Lexically it works. Syntactically, too. Semantically, though . . . .

If you've not read Speaker for the Dead, then I can't explain to you how to parse the words. To quote Spock, "It would be impossible to discuss the subject without a common frame of reference." I don't know how. The names I can explain. The verb I can't.

 

[Steve Roby]

A book I keep forgetting to mention that I think is right up Star Trek fans alley is Speaker for the Dead, the Enders Game sequel.

It’s all about Ender going to a new planet and trying to understand and interact with an alien race. From what I recall, people think the race is evil but he has to prove otherwise. Also it has a very Star Trek “all life is valuable” philosophy.

Also I think most Star Trek fans would enjoy the ethical component of Enders Game.

The person Orson Scott Card was when he wrote Ender's Game was not the person he is now, evidently. EG is actually a splendid counterargument to the things Card believes now.

Just in general, I don't believe in condemning a work for the sins of its creator any more than condemning a child for the sins of their parent. The work is its own thing, and sometimes it transcends its creator's limitations.

Orson Scott Card's earlier work has creepy subtexts. Not just Ender's Game, the Songbird stories too. He hasn't always been a loud hatemonger, but there's always been something weird about him.

 

[Christopher]

Orson Scott Card's earlier work has creepy subtexts. Not just Ender's Game, the Songbird stories too. He hasn't always been a loud hatemonger, but there's always been something weird about him.

If I refused to enjoy any creation of a person whose behavior I had problems with, I'd have to give up Star Trek, all of Isaac Asimov's work, and every DC Comics character that Julius Schwartz had a hand in creating, and probably a bunch of other stuff too. Hell, I'd have to give up physics, because Isaac Newton was a horrible human being.

The art is not the artist. Once it's published, it belongs to us, not them, and we can find value in it independently of, or in spite of, the creator's failings. For instance, I think Harry Potter ironically works very well as a transgender allegory -- a story of a person raised to believe they were one thing, then discovering they were actually something else and finding happiness and fulfillment in embracing that identity -- and it astonishes me that Rowling is so blind to the message implicit in her own work. Yes, I acknowledge that there are problematical messages in the work at the same time -- the mockery of Hermione's fight for house-elf rights, the anti-Semitic stereotypes underlying the portrayal of goblins -- but that doesn't erase the value of the good parts.

I believe we should acknowledge both the good and bad in a work and embrace the former while rejecting the latter. Rejecting the good along with the bad is self-defeating.

 

[Daddy Todd]

It’s all about Ender going to a new planet and trying to understand and interact with an alien race. From what I recall, people think the race is evil but he has to prove otherwise. Also it has a very Star Trek “all life is valuable” philosophy.

Speaker for the Dead has one of the most cogent criticisms of the Prime Directive I've ever read. I almost can't bear to say it (given what a hateful person Card has become) but his take on something like the Prime Directive from someone in a society judged not yet ready for contact with the "more advanced" interstellar civilization is really good.

It goes like this: Imagine you're a member of a less-advanced civilization. A more advanced civilization decided to interdict your world, saying that contact would be unhealthy for you. So, for the next 5000 years, the more advanced civilization has swept past your world and exploited all the habitable planets in your vicinity. Thus, when you finally achieve FTL spaceflight and make the first steps into nearby systems, EVERY AVAILABLE WORLD has been long colonized/inhabited by that other civilization. There's literally nothing left for you.

Rather than a tool of protecting less-advanced civilizations, the Prime Directive is a means of keeping less advanced civilizations out of their way while super civilizations snap up all the "good" planets for themselves.

 

[serdogthehound]

Jack McDevitt's Acedemy Series is a favourite is very good exporation space adventures

 

[Stevil2001]

I actually taught Orson Scott Card's 1979 short story "Skipping Stones" in one of my classes today. It's a very good story, but you can definitely see traces of what Card became in it; you know one of the main characters is bad because he's a paedophile who goes after boys (Card believes homosexuality is caused by pedophilia).

 

[Christopher]

I actually taught Orson Scott Card's 1979 short story "Skipping Stones" in one of my classes today. It's a very good story, but you can definitely see traces of what Card became in it; you know one of the main characters is bad because he's a paedophile who goes after boys (Card believes homosexuality is caused by pedophilia).

And yet IIRC there's a sympathetically portrayed gay character in Ender's Game.

And really, it was a very common belief in the 1970s that homosexuality and pedophilia were linked. There were many unexamined prejudices in that era that much of modern society has repudiated as we've learned better, while other segments of society have doubled down on them and refused to learn better. It's unfortunate that Card ended up in the latter column, but back then, I don't think his attitudes would've made him an outlier.